OPINION:
Sitting out an election is not always an act of apathy or civic disengagement. Sometimes it can be the right choice, when the options are as unappetizing, as they are in the nation’s capital this year for voters charged with choosing a successor to Mayor Vincent C. Gray.
Mr. Gray’s four years in office have been tainted by campaign corruption from Day One; he may yet have a career ahead in pressing out license plates. D.C. Democrats, who have learned not to expect much, wouldn’t renominate him to the usual second term.
Of the choices, Muriel Bowser, 42, is an attractive but empty pantsuit. Her two chief qualifications are that she is not Vincent Gray and has a (D) after her name on the ballot. Indeed, Democratic primary voters in April didn’t so much vote for Miss Bowser as against Mr. Gray. She has campaigned on autopilot, dispensing platitudes about education (she’s for it) and homelessness (she’s against it). The endorsement of a dozen government and other unions doesn’t encourage much hope for change.
With only 7 percent of the registered voters identifying themselves as Republican, Miss Bowser has little competition from two independents who used to be Republicans. Carol Schwartz, 70, served four terms on the D.C. Council and is trying for the fifth time to get elected mayor. Nostalgia is nice, but hardly a compelling reason to vote for someone.
Miss Bowser has been endorsed by seven of the 12 other members of the D.C. Council, whether for party loyalty or her amiable personality, is hard to say. She stands in contrast to the prickly — some say arrogant — third major candidate in the race, fellow councilman David A. Catania. Mr. Catania, 46, at-large independent, is the workhorse to Miss Bowser’s show horse. He produced a 126-page “Vision to Secure Our City’s Future,” which isn’t everybody’s vision, and he doesn’t try very hard to conceal his disdain for those who don’t see things his way.
Mr. Catania’s “vision” includes paid parental leave for workers in D.C., funded by yet another job-killing payroll tax; building the full 37-mile trolley boondoggle, and making the city a state, to give Democrats more votes in Congress. Washington has not yet mastered cityhood, and statehood is the pipe dream of fantasists.
We as good citizens enthusiastically decline to take responsibility for endorsing any candidate this year. We don’t necessarily recommend it, but voters might employ the schoolyard method of choosing: “Eeeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo,” and hope for the best.
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